Playworld - Adam Ross
Season 10 Episode 11 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Adam Ross talks with J.T. Ellison about his novel PLAYWORLD.
Griffin Hurt is struggling—between his role on The Nuclear Family, the pressures of Boyd Prep, and his wrestling coach’s demands, he’s on the brink. Instead of confiding in his family’s shrink, he turns to Naomi Shah, 22 years his senior. Playworld is a gripping tale of youth, miseducation, and excess, capturing 1980s Manhattan as Griffin navigates the blurred lines of adolescence and adulthood.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
A Word on Words is a local public television program presented by WNPT
Playworld - Adam Ross
Season 10 Episode 11 | 2m 30sVideo has Closed Captions
Griffin Hurt is struggling—between his role on The Nuclear Family, the pressures of Boyd Prep, and his wrestling coach’s demands, he’s on the brink. Instead of confiding in his family’s shrink, he turns to Naomi Shah, 22 years his senior. Playworld is a gripping tale of youth, miseducation, and excess, capturing 1980s Manhattan as Griffin navigates the blurred lines of adolescence and adulthood.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch A Word on Words
A Word on Words is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Providing Support for PBS.org
Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(soft music) (bell dings) (typewriter clicks) - [Adam] I am Adam Ross and this is my novel, "Playworld."
"Playworld" is the story about Griffin Hurt, who at the beginning of the novel is a 14-year-old child actor living in New York.
The novel spans a really bad year in the life of this boy and also in the life of his family that reverberate beyond the frame of the novel and the rest of Griffin's life.
(soft music continues) - [J.T.]
It's on the back cover, so it's not a spoiler.
- Sure.
- His parents' friend, Naomi, who is their age, - Yes.
- falls in love with him.
- Yes.
- And it's a sexual awakening, it seems like almost for her as well throughout the book.
- Yes.
- Let's talk about how impossible it is for a young boy who knows nothing about the world, to have a woman like that who's preying on him, in many ways.
- Part of what I'm really trying to describe was this period of time and an era of parenting, right, where we had so much independence as children, we had so much freedom.
It wasn't that you were seen but not heard in that era, and it wasn't like Charlie Brown "Peanuts" where the adults were around you going like, "Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah," - "Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah."
- but that your encounters with adults could be, adults could be so absent and then so, out of nowhere, suddenly intense and overwhelming.
And so the relationship that Griffin has with Naomi is one that, on a certain level, like, he desperately needs because he suffers from a lack of attention.
So when Griffin's encounter with certain adults in the novel, whether it's Naomi and his subsequent relationship with her, whether it's his wrestling coach, he doesn't have the protection of the adults around him.
- Adam, I could talk to you all day.
Thank you so much for being here.
I really appreciate it.
- Thank you so much for having me.
It was really a pleasure.
- And thank you for watching "A Word on Words."
I'm J.T.
Ellison.
Keep reading.
(bell dings) - [Adam] I like to say the book rhymes with my life in the sense that I needed the authority of certain kinds of autobiographical elements.
You know, I was a child actor.
But the things that Griffin is going through, the kinds of choices he has to make, those are invented.
Support for PBS provided by:
A Word on Words is a local public television program presented by WNPT